Darkling
by Min Daae
Summary: Rob Thurman's Caliban Leandros series. Sometimes love is more bitter than the lack of it. Spoilery for the end of the first book and a bit of the second. ONESHOT.


Oh, God, but it's bitter sometimes.

Since last year, I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, just listening to my own breathing, to be sure that it's _me _lying here, looking at my thoughts to be sure that they are mine. Darkling is like a stain on everything, even without the mirrors. Niko pretends he forgets, but sometimes when I slump into the kitchen, he'll look up from where he's sautéing vegetables or whatever healthy shit he's having for breakfast, and meet my eyes for just a minute. Neither of us mentions it, but I know he's checking my eyes for any hint of silver. It's as much a reminder as the white line across my stomach where I died, hardly a year ago.

I've never asked Niko if he dreams about that. He wouldn't answer it anyway, just give me a look and tell me to get my ass in gear and start _actually _running.

Yeah, Niko can feed me as much bullshit as he likes about it _not being me _but I know better. It wasn't 'Darkling and me', it was _me. _It's hard to recover from that kind of knowledge of what I can do to the only person who really matters. The fact that I _shot _Niko isn't going away any time soon.

I went through a week or two when I was around twelve and I started thinking, _really _thinking, what would happen if there wasn't a Niko, if it was just me. I think I scared Niko with that morbid line of thinking. I know I scared myself. The more years go by, the more sure I am that without Niko I would be _mad_, stark, fucking, mad. There's no way I could live with what I am. I probably wouldn't even be here still if it weren't for him. It's not a pretty thing, suicide, but especially with what happened with Darkling…

It's corny as shit, I know that, but Niko is kind of like my Jesus, in a way. Saving my soul or whatever. He keeps me from diving headlong into hell on a daily basis, I know that. He's never asked me for anything. Oh sure, you can argue that he runs my ass into the ground every morning and kicks me across the room on a daily basis in sparring practice; or that he'll nag at me like my mother to keep my gun clean or get enough sleep (but not too much, mind you), but the truth is he'd do anything for me.

After that week I spent drowning myself in images of a world without Niko, he told me that if he ever caught me thinking about such ridiculous things again, he'd feed me nothing but salad for a week. So I tried a new tack, about two years later. I thought about what would have happened if I'd never come back from my first wild ride into hell.

I pictured a life with a pretty wife – no, a _gorgeous _wife who kickboxed in her spare time – except that maybe, if it weren't for me, Niko wouldn't be running, wouldn't need to carry a sword all the time. If it weren't for me, I convinced myself, Niko would be free to live one of those "normal" lives, like the soaps I'd watch on our apartment TV sometimes. He could have a career. A life outside a kid brother who was more than a little bit of a pain in the ass.

I made the stupid mistake of going and telling Niko that he should go and make a life for himself, that I'd be fine and dandy without him. His eyes got all cold and he just _looked _at me for the longest time.

"You want me to go, Cal?"

Cal. Ha. Sometimes it's easy to forget the little things, like how he never called me Caliban, never called me the monster I was named for. Not exactly the sort of thing people would notice if they didn't know me or Niko, but – there you go.

Blithely unaware, stupid little kid me blazed right on through, tears in my eyes at my grand sacrifice, _sure _that I was doing the right thing, the _good _thing, letting my brother go. I might have mentioned the gorgeous kickboxing wife somewhere in there, too. _That _got the first bad word I'd ever heard from him. While I was still stupefied over that, he got me in a headlock.

"I'm not going anywhere, little brother," He said ferociously. "Got that? I don't need _anything _but you. That's _family._ And if you think I'm going to let you wander around New York by yourself getting your ass kicked by every stray bum from here to the Bronx, you have got _another fucking think _coming."

Then he made me run a lap around Central Park at full speed, breathing down my neck the whole way so I couldn't even walk or cheat across the park.

I didn't bring up Nik going anywhere again. That didn't mean I stopped thinking about it, but I definitely didn't mention it to my big brother.

See, now, especially after last spring, I know what would have happened if I'd never come out of Tumulus. I know because it's come close enough to happening often enough that I _know_.

If I hadn't come back, Niko would have sat there, week after week after week, just waiting. Waiting to be _sure _that I wasn't coming back. Waiting, just in case I did, because Niko could not leave his little brother Cal alone. I'm quite certain that if I hadn't come back, Niko would still be there, sitting cross-legged on the grass, waiting as immovable as a stone.

I don't want that kind of control over someone's life. I don't want to be able to know that no matter how fucked up I get, no matter what I do, Niko's going to be there and defending me. I don't _want _him giving up everything for me. That's just a good way for him to die, and then we'll both be totally screwed. I can't live without Nik, and Nik won't live without me. I wish I at least had something to offer him.

Because I don't, I bitch about cleaning my gun, give him nicknames like Cyrano, poke fun at him, refuse to get up earlier than nine o' clock. Maybe it doesn't make sense, but hey – I tried to kill him, he nearly killed me. Without Niko, I'd be lost, or dead, or worse.

So yeah, it's bitter sometimes, knowing I'll never be able to have what he has with Promise, knowing that I have to keep George at a distance because there's no other way to keep her safe. But it's more bitter knowing that Nik would throw away everything he has for me. The little he's gained – if I needed him, it could all go to hell.

People say that they'd give their life for their relatives. Some of them even mean it. But Niko…Niko might actually have the chance to prove how much he means it.

And that's what frightens me. Because if I wake up one morning and Niko's dead because of me –

Darkling won't be anything to what I'll be.


End file.
